Thanks to an astonishing effort by many different partners - including donors (with special thanks to the Finnegan Family Fund for YSS, Rotary Club and City of London Freemen's School in Surrey), volunteers in the UK and Sierra Leone (including alumni, ex-teachers, Peace Corps, Christian Brothers, students and teachers), project workers and local artisans - YSS Library is now a functioning and popular learning resource at the school, with study space for 50 students at a time and 6 large bookshelves of books. Thanks to the library, student volunteering at YSS is on the rise as more and more students take ownership.
Peace Corps volunteer Matt Flannigan, who has invaluably assisted YSSOSTFA's library project on the ground says; "The library has now flourished into a great utility for the students at the school. There is currently one other teacher acting as a head librarian, with two others in the "training pipeline" to assist him. What I am coming to be most proud of is the role the students have taken. At first I was very leary of allowing students alone inside the library, which unfortunately led to it being closed most of the day due to my and the other librarian's teaching schedules. Eventually, I began to trust and to ask certain students to watch the library while I went to teach class. To my surprise, the students have turned out to be better librarians than myself. They have started to organise themselves in a way to keep the library open for the whole school day. They organise the books on the shelves and sweep and wipe the library floors. These student librarians have even begun to go to the other students sitting idle in their teacherless classrooms to encourage them to go read and study in the library. They take great pride in how high they can get the visitor count on any given day. This was my main reason to help start a library at the school - to enable the students to help supplement their own education when the teachers fail to do their jobs. Now the students are the enablers themselves." This was the main motivation of YSSOSTFA back in 2012 when it began planning the library project. It goes to show that anything can be accomplished when people have a common objective.
The REAL project run by the Environmental Foundation for Africa is currently installing bulbs and wiring in the YSS library and says it will be installing a solar panel electricity supply there as part of their project.
Development of the library resource is ongoing, say directors at YSSOSTFA, please contact us at info@ yss-association .org.uk or by post, if you can add your help with BECE, WASSCE and IGCSE text books.
YSSOSTFA has now a started implementing its YSS SCIENCE LABS PROJECT starting with the purchase of Trespa Toplab chemistry lab worktops. Donors should contact us urgently as this project is not fully funded.
